In a blow to the conservative legal movement, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau is not, in fact, an unconstitutional abomination.

The independent agency — which oversees payday lenders, credit card companies, and student loans — has long been a partisan target. And as it turns out, its funding mechanism is perfectly constitutional, the court ruled Thursday in a 7-2 decision.

Its conclusion was straightforward: When it created the CFPB, Congress passed a law that authorized expenditures from specific sources to fund the agency. This satisfies the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution, the court ruled.

The attack on the CFPB is not the only challenge brought this term by conservative opponents of modern regulatory agencies. In as-yet-undecided cases, the Supreme Court will consider whether to curtail the powers of the Securities Exchange Commission and whether to gut a landmark standard for all regulatory oversight. Challenges to the National Labor Relations Board are working their way through lower courts.

In all three cases before the Supreme Court this term, legions of conservative legal luminaries urged the justices to shrink the administrative state. In the CFPB challenge, however, they lost even Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the majority opinion, plus three others from the Court’s conservative supermajority. Only Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

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